- a kind of virtual social intelligence, a reaching out on Group Dynamics and Human Processes at the Workplace ( http://www.workplacecatalysts.com ) .
- Foster a discretionary Presence in Groups, to enable human capability.
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Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Inspite of, and not because of Competence

At Changhi airport earlier this year, I arrived early to
travel into India. I browsed through stores and chanced a premium luxury watch
section. My wife Ann
Joseph knows a great deal about wrist-wear, and a natural familiar curiosity
took me there. When interacting with the salesman from Singapore, he was honest
enough to admit that he had not heard of LG and Samsung as Google Watch
contenders. For a man who sells Bulgari and Rado, I wondered if he ever struck ‘edge’
conversations even with willing clients. But to my surprise, and to Titan’s credit; he acknowledged one brand
from India!

Google
Wear has now admirably entered the User Interface (UI) by glance design!
That puts Titan in the age of the dinosaur. I had earlier tweeted at the length of a
possibility, that perhaps Cyrus Mistry could announce a Nano version for
Titan, by marshalling TCS
and Titan to come up with an earth shattering paradigm given its intellectual
assets and manifest brand value.

Alas, even Wipro
despite its closer to skin successes in ASEAN, could not orchestrate its human
capital to build on its once renowned capabilities in telecom engineering.
People in the industry claim that it could have easily changed the game in
India with device to operator knowledge embedded in its people. Leadership of
risk and innovation are not the routine affair in India, even in growth phases.

Hence, firms mature too early and die with its product or services portfolios. The
long-serving Ambassador
car is one such. Perhaps it is the paradox, India truly needs to balance
better. In its abundance, human resources are treated as commodity in a
capitalist frame. Retail formats in sunrise mode make no real investment in low-cost, client-facing personnel to relate to its clients. Governments and
political ideology in India treat human assets as dole-potential of entrapment, no matter
how differentiated the reach and custodianship of the electorate.

Perhaps, a case can be made that Indian firms succeed
in spite of their competencies, and not because of them!What will it take for
authentic leadership to lay claim on India’s latent potential?